Reflection for Sunday, September 21, 2014

Imagine for a moment that someone you work with gets the same salary as you but only does about a quarter of the work you do. Ok, maybe some of you don’t have to imagine it because it’s actually currently happening in your workplace. My guess is that it wouldn’t or doesn’t sit too well with you. I know that I’d probably be more than a little upset if I found myself in that situation. It seems to me that we all would like to get what we deserve when it comes to our job.

Of course when we interview for jobs we don’t say, “I just want to make sure that I’m not going to be overpaid compared to my co-workers.” Am I right? I imagine that no one has ever said, “Since I’m only going to be working twenty hours a week, I better be getting a lot less than the full-timers.” At least I never have. In fact, when it comes to that time during every job interview when the two parties have to “talk money”, the person applying for the job is hoping that the offer will be even higher than he or she expects or maybe even deserves. It’s funny how that works.

You know where this is leading. The Gospel story we just heard is a familiar one. The landowner in the parable pays all of his workers the same amount, even though they worked different numbers of hours. When we hear this story many of us think to ourselves, “Well, that doesn’t seem fair.” Of course, when we think those words, we’re putting ourselves in the place of the workers who worked the most. We might be wise to consider how we would feel if we were the ones on the receiving end of someone else’s generosity. In one situation we’re resentful, and in the other we’re more than pleased and grateful.

However, I think there is a danger of misinterpreting this reading if we simply come away from it with the idea that God is just with some people and overly generous with others, or that some of us get exactly what we deserve while others get much more, or that God is extra-kind to some people but less so with others. If we interpret the reading only in those terms, we might come to the logical conclusion that God doesn’t treat us all the same.

We could not be more wrong, at least in the way most of us would understand that statement. Part of the problem, I believe, is that we talk about these attributes and actions of God as if they are completely different things, as if God is somehow made up of love, generosity, anger, mercy, judgment, fairness, punishment, etc . and basically spends his time sitting around deciding who gets what. I’m not sure that makes a whole lot of sense. To me, that seems to be kind of a projection of ourselves, and the way we do things, onto God. Actually, in faith, we believe that God simply is. God really can’t be divided up in that way, nor can he be reduced to purely human qualities and characteristics.

You see, when we talk about God we’re limited by language so when we try to say something about God we are forced to use words that normally are used to, describe the feelings, attitudes, and attributes of human beings in a sincere attempt to understand and express the inexpressible. But God simply is. His love is his mercy, is his judgment, is his anger, is his generosity, is his justice.

From our human perspective it can look as if God picks and chooses who gets the most and who gets the least, who gets limitless blessings and who must go without, who has a special place in his heart and who is much further down the totem pole. What’s really happening is God simply being God. In the words of Isaiah,

“As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are my waysabove your ways and my thoughts above your thoughts.”

So how might we understand this reading? It’s right in front of us. You see, we have a tendency to focus on the fact that the laborers didn’t all put in the same amount of work. That’s just us being preoccupied with our limited understanding of fairness. What we probably should focus on is the fact that each of the workers received pay for a full day. Each of them was offered the same, regardless of circumstances or what had transpired before. A full day’s wage for the all-day laborers and for the newcomers, for the greatest and for the least, for the first and yes, even for the last.

God doesn’t treat us all the same? From our human perspective, maybe not. But from a faith perspective, God wants the best for every single one of us, loves every single one of us, blesses every single one of us, and wants each of us to experience the fullness of life, a full day’s wage a full, rich, and meaningful life which begins now and continues on into eternity.

It’s interesting to note what Jesus says to those workers he approaches later in the day.

“Why do you stand here idle all day?”

Maybe that’s who this story is really meant for, those of us, myself included, who find ourselves putting off embracing the new life Jesus won for us through his death and resurrection. He’s continually offering us a full day’s wage and we seem to want to stand idle in the marketplace (to quote from the reading). That should fill each of us with a tremendous amount of hope, for it doesn’t matter how long we have been idle, how long we have neglected receiving this precious gift of new life. For some of us, maybe we’ve been standing on the sidelines for our entire lives.

You know what? That doesn’t matter. God doesn’t care what came before or who we were yesterday. He only cares who we want to be today and whether or not we will accept his invitation to journey out into the vineyard and receive our full day’s wage.

That’s the God we have and from our perspective it’s not fair, that’s true. Actually, he’s much more than fair. He’s loving, generous, and merciful. Hopefully, we can be the same.